"You Bloom Where You're Planted..."

It occurred next to the Athletic Hall of Fame wall where Robyn and a student who was assigned to her to fulfill community service hours were toiling away, pulling weeds, under a hot, late spring sun.

 

“Oh, we always see you working in the garden, and we feel so sorry for you,” Robyn recalls the girl saying.

 

Robyn quickly replied, “Wait, wait, wait…you feel sorry for me? Why do you feel sorry for me?”

 

“Well,” the girl continued, “you’re outside. You’re getting dirty. You’re doing really hard work.”

 

Robyn was incredulous. You see, she’d never considered her job actually to be work.

 

“I’ve chosen this as my profession,” she said. “Please tell your friends that this lady loves her job. Don’t feel sorry for her anymore. I also want people to know there is much more to that person you see who sometimes looks miserable. I’m a runner. I’m a mom with two kids. I’m a good cook. I love to dance Zumba. I love to sing, maybe not well. My husband and I love to camp and go on trips with the kids and watch them in sports. I love what I do. And I have a story.”

 

Does she ever!

 

It’s a story that makes her summer days in the blistering sun seem pleasant, her winter days in sub-freezing temperatures seem like springtime, and the rainy days when she’s soaked to the bone seem like a leisurely stroll in the park. It’s a story of commitment to excellence, her colleagues, and her family. It’s truly a story of survival.

 

Robyn Hartley grew up on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, the middle of three daughters of a nursery manager and a homemaker. Life was often a struggle. Essentials were sometimes in very short supply. She persevered, though, through determination, an indomitable spirit, and an absolute refusal to submit to self-pity. She flourished, then and now, by focusing on the positives – academics, nature, and creativity – and under the guidance of several mentors who recognized her potential and provided encouragement that she carries with her to this day.

 

One was Robin Rinaca, the owner of the Eastern Shore Nursery of Virginia and her father’s employer from the late ‘80’s until the mid ‘90’s.

 

“I was so inspired that this woman worked at this nursery and ran the business so well,” Robyn said. “People respected her. She worked with plants, kind of what I was already interested in. She hired me during the summer to come in and weed. She let me work with my dad. She even offered me a babysitting job for her six-month-old daughter when I was 12.

 

“I really looked up to Robin. She helped change my path saying that women can have the passion to work with plants and do tough work. My dad planted the seed, my mom was into plants, but Robin impacted my true direction in this field.”

 

Robyn’s teen-age years were transformative.

 

“That’s when I really grew up,” she said. “I got dog-sitting and baby-sitting jobs. I could provide for myself, but I never saw myself going to college. Nobody in my family had every gone. We were poor, so I thought it was out of the question.”

 

Enter Mary Heil, her fifth grade teacher and the mother of one of her best friends.

 

“It truly takes a village,” Robyn continued. “Mrs. Heil talked college a lot with her kids, even in their early teens. I thought, that’s not a choice for me. Mrs. Heil said, yes…college is a choice for you. There’s financial aid. There’re ways to make this happen. I was still in denial.”

 

Robyn also found that running cross country and track provided stability and joy and enhanced her self-worth, but she had to be convinced even to try out for the teams at Nandua High School in Onancock.

 

“I wasn’t a runner,” she recalled, “until somebody gave me that magic feather and said, ‘Yes, you can run.’”  

 

That “someone” was Jeannie Lawrence, her sophomore-year health teacher.

 

“She came up to me after the Presidential Physical Fitness test where I ran a 9:59 mile,” Robyn recalled. “She said, ‘I want you to come out for track.’ I said, ‘Mrs. Lawrence, I can’t run. I just did a 9:59. I don’t have transportation, so any kind of sports is out of the question.’

 

“She said, ‘No, I want you to come out. We’ll get transportation. There’s an activities bus. So I went out for track. The first day, in cheap tennis shoes, I ran 7:20. I thought, ‘Wow, I can run a little bit.’ I’m so thankful still that she gave me that push. For almost every day of my life since, I’ve run.”

 

And competed and achieved. Twice Robyn qualified for the Group A championship meet in the 1600. As an adult, she’s run a 5:42 mile, 19:52 5K, 40:03 10K, 1:26 half-marathon, and 3:31 marathon. Her all-time favorite race is the Monument Avenue 10K.

 

And the girl with the stellar academic record who nevertheless thought college was out of the question earned a B.S. in horticulture from Virginia Tech.

 

During her college years, Robyn found a mentor in Christine Waldenmaier, a plant pathologist at the Eastern Shore Agricultural Research and Extension Center.

 

“She gave me a job for four summers,” Robyn said. “Seeing Chris in her role as a scientist and doing physical labor really inspired me. I’m appreciative that there were role models who told me, ‘Yes, you can.’ I got myself into horticulture and really found that’s what I wanted to do.”

 

Robyn and Joe Hartley married in September 2002. A registered nurse who specializes in dialysis, he accepted assignments in California, and as they traveled about and enjoyed time on the West Coast, Robyn always found work in garden centers.

 

“I loved retail,” she said. “I was really drawn to people and teaching them about plants. There was even one in California where I had to speak Spanish. It was fun to pull that out of my high school experience. I even had to learn about cactus and act like I really knew about them. I did learn, eventually. It was great being out in the field.”

 

The Hartleys eventually returned to Virginia, and Robyn was working at the Home Depot on West Broad Street near Horsepen Road when in August 2010 she saw a newspaper ad for a horticulturist at Collegiate.

 

One thing led to another, and, after an interview with ground manager Allison Moyer, she landed a part-time job which several months later became full-time.

 

Her job involves caring for anything around campus that is green and living.

 

“Trees, shrubs, flowers – anything you see on this property – I have touched with my hands,” she said. “I feel like they’re my kids. That’s the main part of my job.”

 

She also cleans up every manner of spill along walkways, disposes of dead animals, and assists with a variety of other duties.

        

“When Allison hired me,” Robyn said, “she reminded me that the job isn’t glamorous. That made it even more exciting. I didn’t want glamorous.”

 

So what excites her about her life’s work?

 

“I love making things pretty,” she responded. “I love when springtime wakes everything up and I see tulips coming out of the ground. I love in the winter when it’s hard and cold and I can see the framework of a tree and can sculpt it to be what we need for the next year. I love designing pots with Allison. I love the artistry of it.

 

“There’s a quote by Confucius: ‘Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.’ Most days, I love everything I do. If you can find the good in most everything you do, then everything’s easy and you don’t have to struggle. I feel like I’ve found my place. I love that my kids go to school here. I love that I can make this campus look good.”

 

“You bloom where you’re planted,” she said. “That expression, I know, sounds cheesy, like a bumper sticker, but it’s carried me through a lot of bad stuff. What it means, if you think about it, is simply this: make the best of everything that happens to you.”

         -- Weldon Bradshaw